Battles and Bits

Now that we've covered spellcasting and character building we can touch on another big part of DnD; Rounds of Combat

Rounds of combat occur when your party of characters encounters an enemy or a set of enemies and has to fight them to continue with the story of the game. Combat also ties in quite a few of the things that we have already talked about. Character traits and stats, spellcasting and roleplaying all have a time and place during combat.

At the beginning of an encounter the order that characters get to go is determined, this is known as Rolling for Initiative. In most cases this is done by each member of the party and each enemy rolls 1 D20 and the order is highest rolls to lowest rolls. (In some cases modifiers can effect what you roll for initiative, like subtracting 1 from your roll which could move you to after another player)

A turn during combat includes:

These parts of combat have no formal order, and unless specified specifically they can be used at any point during your turn of combat.

-- Movement: you can move a distance that is equal to your walking speed. This can be divided during your turn so long as you have not used all of your available walking speed.

--Action: you can choose an action from the list below however you can only do 1 per turn unless otherwise stated. Some races/classes also provide additional options for actions that you can take during a turn of combat.

--Bonus Action: Some races and classes note on possible bonus actions, these are specific to that race or class. Only when stated by a spell, trait or feature of the game do you have a bonus action to take.

--Reactions: These are NOT present for every turn however, some spells or situations allow for characters to take reactions as a part of their turn as well. This can be something like an opportunity attack which is where if a hostile creature moves out of a characters reach that character has the chance to attempt a melee attack.

Check this out for more information on Actions and Reactions

Let's break these elements down a bit further

Movement:

So we've already said that you don't have to use your movement all at once but, this can be divided even more. If you make an attack that utilizes more than one weapon strike in the same attack, you can use some of your movement to strike two different enemies.

You can also use a combination of walking speeds if you have use of more than one. For instance if you have a character with a flying speed as well as a walking speed you can use part of the walking speed, then change to walking so you might be able to move further than you originally thought.

Sometimes movement is made better, some features of the combat setting may make movement more difficult. These are Difficult Terrains they are any terrain that make move within a space more difficult this can range from briars in a forest to simply being within the space of another creature. When moving through difficult terrain the cost of movement is doubled.

Another example is being knocked prone; standing up from prone requires a large standing up requires half of your total moving speed. For a character with a walking speed of 30ft it uses 15ft just to stand.

Actions:

This is a list of the basic possible actions, others can be taken as actions when specified in a trait/ feature or specific spell. This is not all of the basic actions, you can read more here.

Attack: You make one attack with a hand-held (Melee) weapon or with a weapon that needs to be shot (Ranged). For these attacks you will roll to see if the attack hits and then roll for damage if it does. These dice are determined in the stats for what ever weapon you may be using.

Cast a Spell: Spells that have a casting time of 1 action can be cast as actions during your turn. This uses a spell slot and whatever materials or time that the spell requires.

Dash: This action doubles your speed for one turn, however if your speed has be decreased to 15 feet (as an example) you could only move 30 feet using this action.

Disengage: Using this action, you do not provoke opportunity attacks for that turn in combat.

Dodge: Until the start of your next turn in combat, all attack rolls made against you have disadvantage. You also roll Dex saving throws with advantage during this time.

Hide: If you succeed on a Dex saving throw you are hidden from enemies and roll with advantage to hit them. After you try to attack your location is revealed regardless of whether you hit it or not.

Ready: You can determine a possible trigger (or action that will occur by someone else) and prepare a response to it using your action. Like having a spell ready for reaction, or pulling the level on a trap door. This does use the entire action on your turn.

Check back next week for a fun Infographic on Character Stats!

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Check out Critical Role's Video on Combat actions here: